Fernandez Clarifies Vatican Stance on Transgender Surgeries: OK in Exceptional, Severe Cases

Vatican’s doctrine chief gives lecture…

Fernandez Clarifies Vatican Stance on Transgender Surgeries: OK in Exceptional, Severe Cases

‘Tucho’ Fernandez on Sep. 30, 2023 (image credit: Maria Grazia Picciarella/Alamy Live News)

On July 1, 2023, the Vatican’s resident mystical porn author and notorious kissing expert, Victor Manuel Fernandez (b. 1962), was promoted by Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope Francis’) to become the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine Destruction of the Faith. We warned about him from the get-go, saying he would be Francis’ doctrinal undertaker in his new role, and indeed he has not failed to deliver.

On Apr. 2, 2024, Fernandez issued the doctrinal declaration Dignitas Infinita, which naturally bears the formal approval of ‘Pope’ Francis. In this declaration, it is claimed that man possesses an infinite dignity ontologically, one that inheres in his very being as such and can therefore never be lost. Before Vatican II, even the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, was recognized as possessing only a quasi-infinite dignity; but in the Modernist system, man as such, regardless of his participation in the Divine Life through sanctifying grace, possesses an unconditional infinite dignity — “as if he were God” (2 Thess 2:4), one might say.

On Feb. 17, 2025, ‘Cardinal’ Fernandez gave a lecture via video conference to the Kölner Hochschule für Katholische Theologie (“Cologne College for Catholic Theology”). It was entitled “The Ontological Dignity of the Person in Dignitas Infinita: Some Clarifications”.

Unfortunately, the Vatican has so far made the text of Fernandez’ speech available only in German and Italian, or perhaps it is better this way:

• German: Die ontologische Würde der Person in Dignitas infinita: Einige Klarstellungen
• Italian: La dignità ontologica della persona in Dignitas infinita, Alcuni chiarimenti

In this lecture he clarified that, contrary to what some may have supposed, Dignitas Infinita does not categorically reject all so-called ‘gender reassignment surgeries’ as immoral.

Before we look at that in greater detail, here is what the relevant excerpt of the doctrinal declaration concludes about ‘sex changes’:

It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.

(Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dignitas Infinita, n. 60; underlining added.)

At first sight, this seems to say that the surgical alteration of genitals is immoral because it is contrary to the dignity of man. (We will leave out of consideration the fact that the true Catholic standard of morality is not ‘agreement with human dignity’ in the first place but agreement with the law of God.)

Notice, however, the sneaky qualifiers built into the sentence (marked in bold): “It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

Words have meaning, and when one is dealing with Neo-Modernists like Fernandez, it always pays to read the ‘fine print’, so to speak.  The phrase “as a rule” means “generally”; but what is true only generally is not necessarily true in all cases. Furthermore, the words “risks” and “threatening” soften the statement quite a bit.

Thus, whereas it may at first appear as if Dignitas Infinita rejects sex-change surgeries as attacking the dignity and inviolability of the person — as Francis’ pseudo-magisterium outrageously does with regard to the death penalty — the fact of the matter is that Dignitas Infinita teaches not even that such surgical interventions merely threaten man’s dignity but that they only risk threatening it — and then only as a general rule and not in every case.

That Dignitas Infinita was never meant to be understood as condemning all sex-change operations categorically, ‘His Eminence’ Victor Fernandez explained in his address to the German college:

When the document says “as a rule”, this does not exclude the possibility of there being cases that fall outside the norm, such as severe [gender] dysphoria, which can lead to an unbearable life or even suicide. These exceptional situations must be evaluated with great care.

(Victor Manuel Fernandez, “The Ontological Dignity of the Person in Dignitas Infinita: Some Clarifications”, n. 4; our translation.)

With these words, which may seem compassionate and reasonable at first, Fernandez greenlights ‘gender reassignment’ surgeries in principle. That’s because, although he speaks of “exceptional situations [that] must be evaluated with great care”, the fact that he admits of exceptions at all means that the ghastly deed is not intrinsically wrong. In other words, he is saying that such surgical interventions are permissible if one has a good reason for them. Therefore, all that remains to be determined by theologians now is what reasons are to be considered good enough. (Perhaps before long they will conclude that any reason is really good enough, as long as it proceeds from an individual who enjoys infinite dignity.😉)

Fernandez gives an example of what would justify the surgical procedure in his estimation: a severe case of gender dysphoria, inasmuch as it can make life unbearable and even drive someone to suicide. But this is bad reasoning on at least two grounds: First, because it may be surmised that only patients with a severe case of dysphoria would contemplate surgery in the first place; and second, because the claim that life will become unbearable unless someone is permitted to do X could be used to make any evil morally licit.

The Holy Father Pope Pius XII once explained the error present in such theological reasoning, and how to correct it. He used the example of a case in which husband and wife must abstain from sexual relations indefinitely (for whatever reason):

It will be objected, however, that such abstinence [of sexual relations for the married] is impossible, that heroism such as this is not feasible. At the present time, you can hear and read of this objection everywhere, even from those who, because of their duty and authority, should be of quite a different mind. The following argument is brought forward as proof: No one is obliged to do the impossible and no reasonable legislator is presumed to wish by his law to bind persons to do the impossible. But for married people to abstain for a long time is impossible. Therefore they are not bound to abstain: divine law cannot mean that.

In such manner of argument, a false conclusion is reached from premises which are only partially true. To be convinced of this, one has simply to reverse the terms of the argument: God does not oblige us to do the impossible. But God obliges married people to abstain if their union cannot be accomplished according to the rules of nature. Therefore, in such cases, abstinence is possible. In confirmation of this argument, we have the doctrine of the Council of Trent which, in the chapter on the necessary and possible observance of the Commandments, referring to a passage in the works of Augustine, teaches: ‘God does not command what is impossible, but when He commands, He commands, He warns you to do what you can and to ask His aid for what is beyond your powers, and He gives His help to make that possible for you.’

(Pope Pius XII, Address Vegliare con Sollecitudine, Oct. 29, 1951; underlining added.)

If we apply Pope Pius XII’s teaching now to the faulty theology of Victor Fernandez, we can say that life will never be unbearable for following the law of God if we use the means He Himself has put at our disposal to follow Him to Calvary: “For my yoke is sweet and my burden light” (Mt 11:30).

The error in Fernandez’ moral reasoning will become clearer if we try to apply the ‘life is unbearable, I might have to kill myself’ excuse to another procedure that is morally evil in itself, such as abortion. Will he soon say that abortion too may be permitted ‘in exceptional situations’ when otherwise the life of the mother would become so ‘unbearable’ that she might threaten to commit suicide?

Thus we see the frightful errors that can result from abandoning traditional Catholic moral principles.

Our latest podcast, TRADCAST EXPRESS 206, includes a segment on Fernandez’ position on surgical ‘gender reassignment’:

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So, is the surgical alteration of the human body to accommodate a mental delusion an attack on human dignity or not?

Armed with his own ‘infinite dignity’, Bergoglio’s doctrinal undertaker wants to have it both ways.

Image source: Alamy (Maria Grazia Picciarella; cropped)
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